


The Sword and the Storm Extras

by Tmpp



Category: Original Work
Genre: Adventure, Comedy, Drama, Fantasy, Original Character(s), Swords & Sorcery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-08
Updated: 2019-06-14
Packaged: 2019-07-08 15:49:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15933605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tmpp/pseuds/Tmpp
Summary: Behind the scenes events and supplementary stories for The Sword and the Storm main story.Many of the chapters in this will be standalone and applicable to any point of the main novel, but some of them may describe events at a specific point in the story. Related main story chapters will be noted in the pre-chapter notes.





	1. Discovery

**Author's Note:**

> A story from three hundred years ago.

Extra chapter 1: Discovery

  


Olivier was panting furiously, the thin, dusty air of the cavern burning in his lungs as he willed his legs to keep moving. Him and his companions had been climbing for what seemed like hours. The dim light of his lantern didn't extend far enough to illuminate any of the walls or the ceiling, but at least he could see the floor to avoid any sudden pitfalls. It had been days since the group of explorers had moored their ship onto the jagged northern coast of Cuan and made their way into the unexplored cavern systems within the mountainrange. The cavern they were exploring now was one of dozens if not hundreds, many of which had been rumored to hold centuries worth of treasure and loot hidden there by pirates.

They had found none so far, and Olivier seriously doubted any pirate would've traversed the cavern systems this deep in to hide their loot. But hidden treasure was not the only reason they were there; the geology department at the university of Obelea had always had a profound interest in the valuable minerals hidden amidst the Cuan mountainrange. The grand discovery of the properties of cuanstone could be attributed to the university as well. Cuanmen had been using the mineral for centuries in toolmaking, but the true value of the miraculous substance had eluded them until very recently.

Cuanstone was an extremely hard but very brittle mineral found only in the mountains of Cuan. It had the uncanny property of being able to carve and cut almost any other material, including very hard minerals like quartz and diamond. Its value in today's toolcrafting was immense, and its abundance kept the prices low, even though tools made out of it had to be frequently resharpened or replaced. After Obelean scientists had visited the tribal people and told them of the riches their lands held twenty years ago, Cuan had grown into a might to rival Stenning and Branum through the supplying of cuanstone and other metals and minerals. This had raised a new tension into the power balance of the continent, but also paved way for unparallelled advances in masonry, carpentry and weaponcraft.

Olivier shivered under his several layers of clothing. Even in summertime the Cuan mountain range was chilly, and the further into the mountains they went, the colder it got. Their camping equipment was definitely warmer, but huddling down every hour would be a bad idea considering their limited rations. They only had about another half a day's rations with them before they would have to turn back. They had mapped a large portion of the cavern system about sixty miles from the town of Cuanheim, and found several promising deposits of copper, iron and various minerals. The large veins of cuanstone that they had surmised to find here still eluded them.

"Halt! Haah... Need to catch my breath..." a voice sounded from behind Olivier. Callum, the sole junior scientist in their group of explorers, was still not used to fieldwork, and was in what you might call a "typical scientist's shape" physically. Most of the rest of the seven-man troupe were far more used to spelunking.

"Again, Callum? You're going to rid us of our water fast with all of these stops!" Another voice called from behind him. A few mutters and chuckles echoed within the cavern ominously.

"Five minutes, then we push on. We only have about six hours of travels left in us anyway, if we want to survive the return," Olivier said, laid his lantern onto the cavern floor and sat down next to it. The rest of the group followed suit, many of them taking a swig out of their water flasks.

As the group's collective breathing evened out, Olivier noticed an odd faint sound coming from further in the cavern. They had met with rushing waters and slowly crumbling ancient cave-ins before, but this sound was different. It was like a constant, low thrumming coming from very far away. He turned his head around to try and place the direction from which the sound was coming. The echo of the cavern made it difficult to glean, but it seemed to be coming from the opposite side of their entry point into the cavern.

 _"I suppose any direction is as good as any other in here,"_ Olivier thought and propped himself up from the ground. "Alright. Pick up and let's go," he said to the rest of the troupe, who followed suit.

They started making for the direction from which Olivier had heard the sound. The clacking of walking sticks and shuffling of equipment drowned it out, but with Olivier's excellent sense of direction he was certain their heading was right. After about half an hour another member of the group noticed what Olivier thought he had been hearing for a while.

"Do you hear that?" a voice sounded from a couple explorers behind. The entire line stopped to listen.

"Yeah! What is that? Doesn't sound like a stream," another said.

"I've been hearing it since we last rested. It's why I headed us into this direction. Thank Obele you can hear it too, I thought I was slowly starting to go insane," Olivier said to a chorus of excited chuckling. The bizarre sound seemed to energize the entire group rather than make anyone apprehensive as to its source. Only Callum seemed hesitant.

"Are we sure it's safe? What if it's a gas pocket?" he said uncertainly.

"We were never sure any of this was safe. But we're here anyway. We're looking to discover something and this sound is not like anything I've heard before. I'd say that's a good start!" Olivier said, and a few 'Hear hear!'s sounded after him.

The group started moving towards the humming sound with a purpose. After about ten more minutes of climbing the cavern narrowed down significantly, and was now just wide enough to fit a single explorer in his equipment at a time. They formed a strict line and headed down the narrow tunnel. Every now and then a grunt could be heard when someone hit their head or shoulder on small rocky outcroppings.

Something glinted in the lamplight at Olivier's feet. "Halt!" he called to the rest of the party. Callum bumped into his back softly and let out a muffled "Ow!" The head explorer bent down to see what was shining on the ground.

It was a small, rounded, oval-shaped piece of rock or mineral. It had a curious, marble-like sheen with streaks of light blues, greens and pinks across.

"What is it, Olivier?" Callum asked.

"Some kind of gemstone, I reckon. I'd have to see this in proper light to make sure. Let's keep pushing on since we're on borrowed time already," he replied, stashed the small rock into his pouch, and resumed walking towards the increasingly noticeable thrumming. After another half an hour of traversing the tunnel, the ground under Olivier's feet finally evened out. The uphill trek must've lasted for at least a dozen miles in varying steepness, and he could feel the entire group's relief and gratitude at the change.

"Tunnel seems to be ending, too!" he called back and briskly walked towards the spot where his lamplight ceased to illuminate the surrounding walls. The odd sound they had been hearing peaked as they stepped out of the tunnel.

"Whoa." Olivier had stepped into a dead-end. The surrounding walls formed a roughly spherical chamber several dozen yards across, and his lamplight easily lit up all of it. The reason for that was on the wall opposite to the tunnel from which they had entered. The rest of the group stacked into the chamber to marvel at the extraordinary sight. The wall they were facing was seemingly made from the same material as the small rock Olivier had found before. It glimmered magnificently in a plethora of light colours and refracted the group's lamplight to illuminate everything around it.

"What _is_ that?" Callum asked, unadulterated wonder thick in his voice.

"I don't know. Let's find out." Olivier walked closer to the glimmering wall.

The thrumming sound was now palpable enough to make Olivier's neckhairs stand up. It was issuing from the stone, or perhaps from beyond the stone. Several stalactites and stalagmites made from the wondrous material seemed to resonate with the thrumming, and vibrated gently when Olivier touched them.

"This is amazing!" one of the explorers said, and the others echoed his sentiments. Olivier unfastened the small pick and hammer on her tool belt and gave the stalactites a few tentative hits, to no visible effect. "This material is hard. Steel doesn't seem to be effective," he said to nobody in particular, and refastened his tools. He then picked up a shard of a slightly translucent white gemstone from his pouch and scratched the mineral with it.

" _Wow!"_ Come look at this, everyone!" The rest of the explorers huddled around Olivier to take a closer look. He gave the strange mineral several hard chops with the cuanstone edge, and only managed to scuff the stalagmite slightly. The tip of the shard of cuanstone broke off.

"This is incredible!" he said and turned to the rest of the group. "Everyone, gather your tools, we _must_ take some of this with us!" The explorers pooled their tools and various shards of cuanstone together.

"Alright. Use steel to carve new edges on the cuanstone, and then chip away at the base of this one." Olivier pointed to a thigh-height stalagmite jutting from the ground. "The mineral seems extremely hard, and our priority is to take with us any small amount of it. If we fail to extract it, this mission will have been for naught."

Everyone murmured their agreement and started formulating a strategy and rotation to working the mysterious mineral. Olivier turned back to the glimmering wall and pulled the small oval out of his belt pouch. "What are you...?" he asked the oval and looked up at the wall. It did not answer.

For the next several hours the men worked to gouge at the mysterious mineral in turns. They made slow but steady progress, and every now and then someone stood up to kick the stalagmite to see if it would break off, only to clutch his foot in pain. Soon enough all of their cuanstone tools had been chipped into unusability, and none of their steel tools could do anything to the mineral. The stubborn stalagmite was still standing on a small sliver of mineral tethering it into the ground.

"I can't believe we still cannot break it free!" Olivier said in exasperated amazement. The sliver holding the stalagmite in place couldn't have been wider than a few inches, but none of the men were able to wrest or kick the jutting piece of mineral free.

"We're out of tools. What about if we all pull together?" Callum said. Everyone looked at him, then at eachother.

"It's the best bet we've got," Olivier said and rolled back his sleeves. "Two men on the shard, everyone else at their waist," he said, and the group settled into a tug-of-war position with the unyielding piece of mineral.

"On three. One, two, THREE!" The group pulled with all of their might. The steady thrumming sound issuing from the wall of mineral became louder in a crescendo of vibration, and then the piece broke free. All of the men crumpled into a pile onto the cavern floor.

The thrumming sound stopped completely. Instead, a loud rumbling sound could be heard from everywhere around them, as the ground started to shake.

"Everybody up!" Olivier shouted as he reached to pick up the loose piece of mineral. It was much heavier than he would've assumed for such a thin piece to be. As the explorers were clambering onto their feet, a violent shudder shook the cavern.

"Look out!" Olivier yelled and pushed Callum out of the way of a huge falling stalactite. Another slightly smaller one fell onto the spot he had been standing in just before. The fallen pieces were also made of the mystical mineral, but one of them was a few times larger than the one they had cut off, and the one that had almost hit Callum was veritably huge.

"Orlean, Ridde, Franck, Callum! Grab the large piece! It's evidently really heavy so balance the weight! Turand and Everle! Grab the smaller one! And RUN!"

The rest of the men hastened to follow Olivier's orders as the tunnel they had emerged from shook dust from its ceiling precariously. The quake that was disrupting the chamber threatened to cave it in on them, but Olivier would not accept leaving without taking the minerals with them, and he knew most of the other explorers would agree.

The party made their way back through the narrow tunnel, grunting and panting from the effort of trying to carry the huge, heavy piece of the mysterious mineral in a coordinated fashion. Olivier led their way, shining the lamplight through the tunnel, and after ten rough minutes they emerged back into the larger cavern. The shaking and quaking had lessened significantly, but they could still hear and feel an ongoing rumbling issuing from behind them.

"Switch up, who feels the fittest can remain carrying the big piece and the rest of you can rest your shoulders. We have to keep moving though, there's no telling what this shaking will do to the cavern, no matter how minute," Olivier said to the group and joined three other men in carrying the largest of the pieces.

For the next several hours they walked briskly downhill, the shaking of the cavern waning with each step. The thrumming sound they had been hearing before was now completely gone, and after a while, the rumbling ceased as well.

"I guess we're out of immediate danger. Quarter hour break, and then we'll make for the exit," Olivier said, and grunted to set down the heavy piece of mineral with the other men.

For the next few days they traveled back through the parts of the cavern they had mapped. Their supplies were dwindling, but according to Olivier's calculations they should be sufficient.

And sure enough, the smell of salty sea air met the tired and hungry explorers at the end half of the second day. Relieved groans and whoops issued from each one of them, as they hastened their pace, desperate to reach home. By nightfall the mineral pieces had been safely stashed into the cargo hold of their ship, and the crew had prepared her for sailing.

"We must make haste back to Obelea. We may have made another scientific discovery of a century!" Oliver told the captain of the ship, who had advised against sailing during the night. Moonlight illuminated the windy coast of Cuan as the ship left the shallows and sailed towards the sea.

The explorers were all asleep by the time they set sail, and not even the scout in the crow's nest could notice the huge, winged form descending on them from within the mountains.

As morning fell onto the coast of Cuan, no living person remained among the wooden debris in the shallows.


	2. Dishonor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An evening in a certain state head's life.

The General King of the Mercenary State sat alone in his office, rubbing his temples. He had had a very long and very arduous week dealing with the fallout from a failed contract, one of the worst failures in his twenty-five year term as the General King. The fifteen knights and two Landsknecht he had sent on what was supposed to be a 'routine border control mission' to Aderta, one of the smaller nations to the northwest, were all dead.

The small but reasonably prosperous nation had been suffering from nigh-harmless goblin raids, where livestock and various farm equipment had been the biggest victim. The leadership of Aderta had paid handsomely for a contingent of knights to secure the slice of their border with Cuan where the raids most often happened. After two weeks or border patrol, the State knights had slain a good fifty goblins, and everything had seemed to be going well. Goblins were not smart by any means, but they had seemed to have realized that less and less of their brethren returned from the raids, and had ceased them altogether.

But then, after another two weeks of minimal activity, an entire horde of goblins had attacked Aderta, this time fully armed and accompanied by a contingent of mountain trolls the size and strength of five men; a military action of entirely unprecedented magnitude from the filthy creatures. The knights' call for reinforcements had arrived in Mercenary State too late, and they had all perished fighting for Aderta. Miraculously, the meager Adertan militia had been able to finish off what forces remained after the State knighthood had taken care of most of the invaders. Damage to Aderta had been minimal, but the damage to the Military State was immense.

The General finished drafting a letter to the last of the twenty two deceased knights' families. He would have liked to meet them all in person to express his deepest condolences, but as the head of the state had no time for such a gesture for anyone but the two Landsknecht, his own hand-picked elite guard. For the rest of the knights, the lukewarm letters with empty words would have to do. At least the knights' families would be recompensed for their loss. Not that losing a son, a brother, a husband or a father could possibly be fixed with money. The State took care of its own, however bitter the financial gesture might have been to many of the people in mourning of the deceased.

The General put down his pen, leaned back in his chair and exhaled deeply. He was physically and mentally exhausted, and yet still had to write an estimate for the hit to the State's coffers from paying reparations to the families. It disgusted him down to his core to put a price on the life of a soldier, but that was the very reason why the contracts existed when all was said and done. Without them the knights' families would have lost a significant part of their income alongside a loved family member.

The General shut his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. He had ruled as the General King for a quarter of a century. His actual name was Arhus, but nobody had known him as such for decades. He had been elected leader from amongst the previous liege's top lieutenants, and had become a General King in mind, body and soul. And even after this horrific debacle, he would most likely still remain one.

It was well past midnight and business hours, so hearing a loud knock at his office door made the General start. "Enter," he called and sat up straight in his chair.

The door opened to reveal Sir Tolmann, a Landsknecht and one of his best lieutenants, striding into the room and clutching a roll or parchment. The General groaned inward. A missive at this hour could only be either more grave news, or more urgent work. "Not more bad news, I hope?" he asked Tolmann hopefully.

"I do not believe so, my General. Not for us, anyway. We have an urgent contract missive from Brunn." Sir Tolmann strode across the room to the General's table and laid down the scroll in front of him. "It arrived via pigeon minutes ago. It bears the official seal and the ribbon of urgency."

The General picked up the scroll tied with a gold-and-red ribbon and stamped with the wax seal of the Brunn council. He removed the ribbon and opened the scroll.

 

_Esteemed General King,_  


_Today, three hours before midnight, Brunn was besieged by a large contingent of orcs, aiming to raid our lower city. The Brunn guard was able to repel the attack, but we have reason to suspect that it was orchestrated by a powerful human sorceress._

_The sorceress in question was brought into custody and prepared for interrogation, but she escaped with the aid of one of your own. A one-armed knight woman bearing the black ribbon crest._

_We would seek for contract to pursue and apprehend the sorceress, as well as your traitor. We respectfully assume that your highness played no part in the State knight's actions, and that you would have her apprehended and questioned for your own purposes._

_We imagine that with the involvement of one of your own, we may come to a contract that will please both sides._

_Respectfully, on behalf of the Brunn Council, Councilman Rive_

  


The General King crumpled the piece of parchment in his hands. He was usually very adept at controlling his temper, but amidst all the stress and the sleepless nights of the past week, it threatened to flare out of control. "Ariel von Heide," he said, voice wavering with anger.

"Beg your pardon, sire?" Tolmann replied, confused.

The General King drew a deep, stabilizing breath, and looked straight at Sir Tolmann, unconsciously clenching and unclenching his fist. "Ariel von Heide has assisted a rogue sorceress with an attack to Brunn. It seems that on top of losing her pride as a knight, she has now lost her sanity as well."

The General stood up from his desk, walked over to the bookshelf that held the contract templates, and picked up one that specified a contract with no fee to the recipient. He was no stranger to political equivocations; 'A contract that will please both sides' will have meant 'A contract that you will handle for free to save face'.

"I will issue a contract for three Landsknecht to pursue and apprehend Ariel von Heide and her sorceress cohort. You will head the party, and you may enlist any amount of State knights to aid you in the search. Assume them extremely dangerous, and be prepared to use incapacitating force." The General wrote furiously onto the piece of parchment, besides himself with anger that one of his own would betray the State like this. "You will travel to Brunn to query about the sorceress. This letter does not specify anything other than her power to summon orcs. You know Ariel von Heide's skills well, personally. Do you accept?" He slammed down the pencil and rolled up the contract. The General knew that his tone of voice didn't leave much room for choice for the Landsknecht.

"I accept. I will take Sir Laincars and Sir Rotdam with me," Tolmann said and grabbed the contract the General offered him.

"Sir Rotdam is on a mission in Heide," the General King replied, the coincidence of names only serving to further his irritation. "Take whomever you find awake in the upper barracks. You will leave immediately. You will be recompensed for the night mission."

Sir Tolmann saluted the General King and left without a word.

The General exhaled and sat back down into his chair. His anger at the traitorous knight showed no signs of dissipation as he reached for the bottom drawer of his desk for a bottle of whiskey. He poured himself a glass and downed it in one gulp.

The Mercenary State valued merit over many other factors, and Ariel von Heide had proved hers magnificently. She had been among the youngest Landsknecht to ever have been knighted, as well as one of the very few females in the entire history of the order. Skilled, ambitious and extremely hard-working, all of her honors had been well-deserved, and she had shone as a paragon to the entire concept of knighthood even amongst the Landsknecht. The news of the dismal mission against the invading gryphon had hit the General like a sledge to the stomach. Losing two extremely talented knights and having one be debilitatingly crippled was a massive blow to the entire knighthood, not to mention against all that the order of the Landsknecht stood for. All three of the gravely injured knights had been deemed unfit for service by the physicians and healers of the State military, and the General had personally seen them receive their dismissal from active duty with the highest honors.

But Ariel von Heide had not appreciated the gesture. Ariel von Heide had thought herself above such petty things as an honorable discharge from active duty. Ariel von Heide, with only one working arm, was in his office, bowing and begging for inclusion in _any_ mission, regardless of her own stature as a Landsknecht. Ariel von Heide had shed the last remains of her pride and honor as a knight to preserve a vague semblance of a military career. For who could ever find use for an one-armed knight? The mere thought was an insult to the State knightship and their reputation.

And now, Ariel von Heide had thrown away the very last of her integrity as a knight, and aided a criminal in an assault against one of Mercenary State's oldest and most respected allies. The General King's blood threatened to boil over as he flung his empty glass across the room. It shattered against the wall above the fireplace and showered the mantelpiece with shards of glass.

"She will sully our name yet. I will not stand for this transgression," he said to himself and threw the Brunn Council's crumpled missive off his table. Moreso than an act against the Mercenary State and its reputation, the General King had slowly started thinking of Ariel von Heide's actions as an act against himself personally.

To him, it had started to seem like the loss of the knights at Aderta was Ariel von Heide's fault too.


	3. Conspiracy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now what on earth did Tolmann do after meeting up with Ariel in the woods north of Hilders?

Tolmann was rushing down the narrow forest path towards the main trade road between Hilders and Cuanwar to its northwest. Light rain was starting to drizzle down, with the chilling feeling that pre-empted a downpour. Staying dry until he reached the city might have been possible had he taken the most direct route, but he had left his faithful horse behind when the path had narrowed too much to allow for riding. The horse was the highest quality war steed breed that the Military State could offer, and would wait for Tolmann's return until the end of the world if it so came to pass. Leaving it behind would not only be a dire waste of materiel, but betrayal to a friend.

"The shite I do for friendship..." Tolmann muttered to himself while jogging. He was under direct orders from the General King himself to apprehend Sir Ariel von Heide, a decorated young Landsknecht and one of his oldest friends in the State Military, as well as the 'evil sorcerer' she was traveling with. Under suspicion of leading an attack to Brunn, one of Military State's important trade partners, no less. The Ariel that Tolmann knew would have rather died than even considered treason against the Military State, so he had thought her bewitched by the sorcerer in question. That was until he had seen her at the old ranch down south; a stick-thin, ragged girl who couldn't have been older than sixteen, face rumpled in concentration to cast a simple spark of lightning at an unarmored target. Tolmann was by no means a grand sorcerer himself, but he doubted the young girl could have beaten him in a magical duel with his hands tied behind his back.

But then again, mere hours ago, the sorceress in question had stopped him dead with a simple command, bewitched a gryphon and taken to the skies, traveling towards the hostile north without any equipment in tow. And then Ariel had told Tolmann that the little girl had killed dozens of orcs by herself back in Brunn. Maybe Ariel was being controller after all? She possessed next to no magical capabilities of her own, maybe that made her more susceptible to the magic of others? A great sorcerer surely wouldn't have any trouble hoodwinking others to believe she was a meek, young girl. But if that were the case, what exactly was she planning? And why did Ariel seem so adamant on chasing her towards Cuan even after the girl had left her behind?

And then there was the matter of Brunn to consider. Tolmann had not dug deep enough to his liking during his stay there. Including Ariel's testimony on the number of guards that had responded to the orcish raid, he had heard multiple odd things about the city's military and their recently increased apprehending of sorcerers from the lower castes. Laincars had also told him he heard some ominous things, and his instincts were usually correct. Brunn was preparing for something, amassing weaponry and training soldiers at a much faster pace than usual. What reason did they have to do so in this era of peace? Tolmann wished he'd had the foresight to visit the Brunn council under any excuse.

A glint of white caught Tolmann's eye from amidst the trees. Paz, his horse, was waiting patiently exactly where he had left it, munching on some grass on the side of the path. "Good boy," Tolmann said to it, quickly patted it on the flank and hoisted himself into the saddle, panting heavily. Jogging such a long way in full armor would have him sore for the next week. "Go," he said, whipped the reins gently and led the horse back towards the main road. After mere minutes of traveling back towards Hilders in the light rain, two silhouettes materialized at the opposite end of the route. Riding closer, Tolmann recognized them as Sir Laincars and initiate Hader. "Any news?" he asked them as they reached each other.

"None," Laincars said. "No Landsknecht or sorcerer has passed the gates of Hilders or any of the checkpoints around the city, apart from us."

"Well I have news," Tolmann said, casting a meaningful look toward Laincars. "A farmer north of Hilders saw them heading northwest towards Cuanwar along the hedge roads and fields. They must be avoiding the main routes." He nodded at Laincars. The fellow Landsknecht was clearly suspecting something, but Tolmann knew he had his trust. They would have to talk in private. "Hader, you keep following the route up to Langstedt and inform Errel and Sir Grahaut that we will reconvene in Hilders," he said to the initiate, who saluted him and continued riding northwest without a word. "Let's go," he said to Laincars and nudged his steed into motion towards Hilders.

"Something you're not telling me," Laincars said. It wasn't a question.

"Yep. I met with Ariel and the sorcerer," Tolmann said. He had found it useless to try to hide anything from Laincars. "Not telling you where they actually went, though. Not until I have more information. This entire thing stinks, bad."

Laincars grunted, but nodded. "I agree," he said after a long while of riding in silence. "You don't think Ariel was under an enchantment, then?" he asked shrewdly.

"No. It's possible, but I don't think so. She..." Tolmann hesitated to tell Laincars about Ariel's moment of weakness in the forest, and what happened after. But Laincars was smart and it was the best way to try and gain his trust for her. Perhaps he ought to omit some of the details for now, though. "There was a gryphon up north. Her body still remembered the beast. Obviously wasn't the same one, but... refused to listen to her. She couldn't fight it. And the sorcerer girl, she was taken by the gryphon, which upset Ariel greatly. The girl is definitely a sorcerer, but I don't know about the entire... summoning hordes of orcs to attack Brunn part. If she were evil, why would she leave Ariel of all people behind like that? If I had her as a tool I'd use her till the bitter end," Tolmann recounted, coughing in embarrassment right afterwards. His last statement had come out sounding worse than he had intended.

Laincars laughed. "That sounds wrong, but you're right. I've had my suspicions since Brunn. And you did see the girl, right? She looks like she couldn't enchant a flower to bloom."

"Looks can be deceiving, don't forget," Tolmann said, thinking about Ariel's story and the girl's seeming control over the gryphon. He agreed with Laincars, but certainly wanted to keep his suspicions about the young sorceress in mind until the confirmation of facts one way or the other. "We should look into Brunn more. I've sent careful word to Erwayn," he said, deciding to put aside the targets of their original contract for now.

Laincars turned to stare at Tolmann with his mouth open, but eventually closed it and nodded. "That may be the best. I trust you handled it subtly enough." This wasn't a question either.

"We should investigate further. Send word to the State that the search is moot for now, and that border checks are all that's required. We'll head to Brunn personally to ' _explain the situation'_ to the council, and to ' _look into the sorcerer's background',_ " Tolmann said, already hatching a plan in his head. The easiest way to get to the council would be to promise them the sorcerer, so he would do so. Whatever the council decided to do after it became evident that Tolmann didn't have her would be handled later.

"What if all this has repercussions against the treaty between our city states?" Laincars asked. Tolmann had a suspicion he already knew the answer, though.

"I figure whatever we do is going to have repercussions sooner or later. If it turns out Brunn is planning something... big, I'd rather not give them more sorcerers to work with," Tolmann said morosely.

Tolmann spent that evening writing several letters to several entities. The State would learn that his unit had lost their target to the wilderness of Cuan, and would continue their 'investigation of the sorcerer's background' back at Brunn. The General King trusted Tolmann enough to not question his motives. And if he did... no, thinking that far ahead could be considered treason in itself, and Tolmann didn't want to pull that rug out from under himself, not yet anyway. He drafted up a second, much less sensitive letter to Erwayn, asking for a regular quaternary status report on the trade between Erwayn and Capital City, and sliding in a clever inquiry about some statistics on recent Brunn transactions as well. The third letter was to a junior member of the Brunn council that Tolmann knew personally, asking for a formal audience with at least a quarter of the full council. Demanding a full council meeting would certainly alert them if something untoward really were going on.

Tolmann absent-mindedly scratched his cheek with the quill, then with his fingers, spreading the ink across his face. "I really should sleep already," he muttered to himself, rolled up the final letter and stamped it with his seal. One of the initiates would have to take the letters to the pigeon office, his legs were aching enough from the jog through the woods.

He had come to the conclusion that the Ariel in the woods was sane. Her eyes, frozen with fear at her old arch-enemy... and her anguish after seeing the gryphon whisk the sorcerer girl away. There was probably something more there that Tolmann didn't know about, something personal. Ariel had told him that the sorceress had defended Brunn from an orc attack instead of being the cause of it, and Tolmann believed it. Something else had caused the orcs to travel hundreds of miles down south to attack a city where they would almost certainly all be annihilated, even if they did manage to raze most of the lower city to the ground. Like he had told Laincars before, all of it stunk. And he wanted to get down to the bottom of it. Partly due to his own stupid curiosity, but mostly for Ariel. Oh, what he wouldn't do for Ariel.


End file.
